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The Battle of Firwood Rise was a battle of the Wapiti War which occurred in 1899. A US Army patrol was ambushed by the Wapiti Indians, aided by two outlaws from the Van der Linde Gang, leading to an escalation in the brewing rebellion on the Wapiti Indian Reservation.

Background[]

In 1899, tensions between the US Army garrison at Fort Wallace, South Dakota and the Wapiti Native Americans of the Wapiti Indian Reservation escalated after rumors spread that the Wapiti reservation sat atop oil-rich land. Colonel Henry Favours, the commander of Fort Wallace, sought to redeem his tarnished service record by provoking and winning an easy war against the Native Americans, and he worked towards starting a war by confiscating the tribe's horses, sending their women and children to reform schools for assimilation, and withholding vaccines from the tribe. While the Wapiti tribe's chief Rains Fall was opposed to a suicidal war with the Army and sought a peaceful solution, his young son Eagle Flies and other young warriors agitated for a confrontation rather than admit defeat. They found allies in the fugitive Van der Linde Gang, led by the idealistic outlaw Dutch van der Linde, who both sympathized with the plight of the Indians and also sought to create a distraction large enough to divert the government from the pursuit of his gang.

After a series of tit-for-tat provocations, such as the Natives' recovery of the confiscated horses from a transport ship on the Mississippi River, the US Army's desecration of a Wapiti sacred site in the Black Hills, the massacre of several American soldiers at their camp near the sacred site, the Army's removal of vaccines from the reservation, and the outlaw Arthur Morgan's violent hijacking of the vaccine wagon, Van der Linde and Eagle Flies planned their most audacious action yet. The two men - joined bby Morgan, Paytah, and two other Wapiti braves - gathered dynamite stolen from a wagon in Van Horn and planted the dynamite on trees along the road out of Rapid City, where a US Army patrol was due to pass through. Van der Linde and Eagle Flies planned to trap the column between two felled trees, force them to surrender, and humiliate them by tarring and feathering them. While Morgan was averse to the plan, fearing that the soldiers would retaliate, Van der Linde argued that such a fight would provide the gang the distraction they needed to escape the country as the government focused on its war with the Natives.

Battle[]

Ambush at Firwood Rise

The ambush at Firwood Rise

While waiting on the ridge with his five fellow gunmen, Morgan spotted the approaching Army patrol with his binoculars and, at Dutch's signal, detonated the explosives. The explosions felled the two great trees and trapped the patrol, and Eagle Flies then announced that the patrol was surrounded and demanded their surrender. Sergeant Gregory T. Hartley was defiant in his response, as he knew that another patrol was coming up behind them; soon, Dutch noticed that the Army would receive reinforcements as well, causing Dutch - predicting a firefight - to fire the first shots at the trapped patrol. A shootout ensued, and the trapped soldiers were massacred, while the reinforcement patrol stormed the cliffside and brought the battle to the gunmen. The gunmen killed all of the soldiers who attacked them, and they proceeded to check the bodies of the killed soldiers for intelligence.

Ambushers scouring the soldiers' bodies

The ambushers scouring the soldiers' bodies.

While scouring the bodies, the men were blasted by cannon fire which killed two of the Natives, forcing them to charge up the other hill and seize the cannon position. The gunmen used rocks and felled trees as cover as they stormed the hill, ultimately overcoming the cannon crew. Just then, Morgan announced that the Army was sending riders from the fort, and announced that they had to leave. However, Eagle Flies insisted on searching for Paytah, and, when he found a wounded Paytah limping towards the hill, he ran towards him; just then, the Army resumed its attack, forcing Van der Linde and Morgan to flee in a separate direction as Eagle Flies and Paytah were captured.

Army cornering Morgan and Dutch

The Army cornering Morgan and Dutch.

Morgan and Van der Linde engaged in a running battle as they fled along a cliffside over the Cheyenne River, but they soon reached a dead end and were confronted by Captain Allan T. Smith and privates Robert J. Donahue, Joshua B. Trout, and Michael G. Carstarphen. Smith demanded that the two outlaws surrender, but Dutch told Arthur that he had a plan, and he stalled the Army men by talking about he had been fighting his whole life, especially against change. He then said that he would now have to fight against gravity, and he and Morgan both jumped from the cliffside and into the river, surviving the fall and escaping the Army. The Army lost around 30 men in the ambush, including Sergeant Hartley, Patrick A. Atkins, Ray T. Hutchins, Morris M. Allshouse, Glenn K. Gilbert, Bryan S. Cooley, Carroll C. Smith, Edgar J. Smith, Gerald L. Mann, Dustin B. Burke, Rodney E. Dryden, Craig L. Crownover, Robert Reed Saunders, Ralph T. Chastain, Gerald E. Henderson, George M. Duvall, Steve L. Priddy, Blaine K. Hice, Rufus M. Evers, Robert K. Wilkins, Timothy R. Voight, Earl D. Daugherty, Collin C. Lewis, and Alfred Newton Jones.

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